Russian and Chinese Aggressiveness an Objective Requirement of Their Rulers and ‘a Kind of Rebirth of Leninist Idea of World Revolution,’ Savvin Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Dimitry Savvin, the editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian portal, Harbin, says that the aggressiveness of Moscow and Beijing are the product of the objective requirements of their rulers and represent “a kind of rebirth of the Leninist idea of world revolution.”

    According to him, “in the early 1990s, it seemed that totalitarian regimes were becoming a thing of the past” and that “the communist system was either collapsing or undergoing a liberal market transformation.” But “as very sad historical experience has shown,” that was not the case (harbin.lv/prichiny-vneshney-ekspansii-neokommunisticheskikh-i-neosovetskikh-rezhimov).

    What happened then was “not a fall at all” of communism but rather “just another mutation,” Savvin says; and “the neo-communist and neo-Soviet systems have not only survived and stabilized but also beginning their external expansion” to meet the need of their elites to remain in power by destroying those forces abroad that would otherwise defeat and oust them.

    Lenin believed in a world revolution because he recognized that if he did not defeat the forces of liberalism and the free market, he would never be able to construct socialism, a position that those who followed him continued, despite some twists and turns including a belief that socialist countries would win out during an extended period of peaceful competition.

    But it became obvious that an arrangement of unlimited dictatorship with a relatively free market could not last for long; and for a brief time in both Russia and China it appeared that those holding dictatorial power would cede it in order to take advantage of free markets and not be pushed into the dustbin of history.

    In the 1990s, Savvin continues, it looked like that was happening: “The Russian Federation officially rejected Marxist-Leninist ideology and the in the Chinese Peoples Republic was confirmed ‘wild capitalism under a red flag.’” But in both, “the previous ruling stratum and previous apparatus of power was retained.”

    Rulers in both places know,” the conservative writer says, that “the neo-NEP of Bukharin and Deng Xiaoping can’t compete peacefully with liberal democracy and the market system. Sooner of later, the neo-NEP will lose.” Moreover, “isolationism is not an option: it can only delay the catastrophe for a few decades.”

    That confronts the two elites with a choice: “either to accept the obvious and natural, beginning the smooth dismantling of the neo-Soviet and neo-communist system to quietly and peacefully "leave history;" or to continue the struggle with military methods - on a global scale with the goal of destroying liberal democracy and the market economy on the planet as a whole.

    Given that the odds the leaders in Moscow and Beijing will chose to give up power and leave the scene on their on volition is vanishingly small, Savvin continues, what the world is confronted with is almost certainly “a second edition of the concept of a world revolution” carried out by leaders who are prepared to do anything to maintain their power.

    “If the Free World, in the person of its elites and its intelligentsia does not recognize this danger,” Savvin concludes, “then in the course of several decades it may simply cease to exist.”